StemCell Therapy

The Associated Press news service, whose reports circulate worldwide, has taken the measure of the $3 billion California stem cell agency, declaring that it has produced no cures and that it "faces an uncertain future."

The piece by science writer Alicia Chang asked whether the agency is "still relevant" nearly eight years after it was created by California voters and whether it will exist after the money for new grants runs out in about five years.

She wrote,

"Midway through its mission, with several high-tech labs constructed, but little to show on the medicine front beyond basic research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine faces an uncertain future."

Chang's piece carries more weight than those in most publications. The AP is the backbone of news coverage in the United States. Its news feeds appear automatically on hundreds, perhaps thousands of web sites in this country. Her article will also serve as a baseline in the future as other reporters examine the stem cell agency.

Here are excerpts from the piece:

"So what have Californians received for their money so far?

"The most visible investment is the opening of sleek buildings and gleaming labs at a dozen private and public universities built with matching funds. Two years ago, Stanford University unveiled the nation's largest space dedicated to stem cell research - 200,000 square feet that can hold 550 researchers.

"There are no cures yet in the pipeline and CIRM has shifted focus, channeling money to projects with the most promise of yielding near-term results."

Chang wrote,

"Several camps that support stem cell research think taxpayers should not pay another cent given the state's budget woes.

"'It would be so wrong to ask Californians to pony up more money,' said Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, a pro-stem cell research group that opposed Proposition 71, the state ballot initiative that formed CIRM."

The article quoted UC Davis stem cell researcher Paul Knoepfler as favoring another bond measure to keep CIRM afloat, although he said he recognizes the average Californian may disagree.

Roger Noll, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford, was quoted as saying that "CIRM's legacy has yet to be written."

"'CIRM spent a lot of money and there's a lot of stuff going on, but it's too early to know whether it was worth it,' Noll said."

Chang concluded with these four paragraphs:

"David Jensen, who runs the blog California Stem Cell Report, said Californians have benefited, but whether it will be worth the $6 billion the state has to pay back remains unclear.

"'The agency's responsibility is now to get the biggest bang for the buck, which is no easy task given the tentative nature of much of the science involved,'" he said in an email.

"Some think CIRM has left a mark whether or not it will exist in the future.

Its 'legacy will be felt in part by the stimulus that it has had on stem cell' research in California, said Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies."

Source:
http://californiastemcellreport.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

The California Stem Cell Report has found its cyberspace connection again on Isla Taboga about 10 miles offshore of Panama City. We expect to bring you live coverage via an Internet audiocast of Wednesday's meeting of the board of the California stem cell agency. The directors are scheduled to discuss a progress report on the agency's ambitious, $250 million disease team program and the termination of one grant. Directors are also expected to consider the agency's proposed budget for the coming year, its plans for its next few years of life and its plans to give away $3 million for stem cell programs for high school students. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. PDT.

http://www.cirm.ca.gov/summaries-review-applications-rfa-11-04-cirm-creativity-awards

Source:
http://californiastemcellreport.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

HOUSTON -

Doctors from the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital have found that patients with heart failure may be able to repair the damaged areas of the heart with stem cells from the patient's own bone marrow.

Doctors presented the findings at the American College of Cardiologys 61st Annual Scientific Session Saturday.

The results are from a multi-center clinical study that measured the possible benefits of using a patients own bone marrow cells to repair damaged areas of the heart suffering from severe heart failure, a condition that affects millions of Americans.

The study, which was the largest such investigation to date, found that the hearts of the patients receiving bone marrow derived stem cells showed a small but significant increase in the ability to pump oxygenated blood from the left ventricle, the hearts main pumping chamber, to the body.

The expectation is that the study will pave the way for potential new treatment options and will be important to designing and evaluating future clinical trials.

This is exactly the kind of information we need to move forward with the clinical use of stem cell therapy, said Emerson Perin, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Research for Cardiovascular Medicine at THI, and one of the studys lead investigators.

The bone-marrow derived stem cells are helpful to the injured heart when they are themselves biologically active, added Dr. James T. Willerson, the studys principal investigator and President and Medical Director of THI.

This study moves us one step closer to being able to help patients with severe heart failure who have no other alternatives.

The study was conducted by the Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network, the national consortium to conduct such research funded by the National Institutes of Healths National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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Stem cell, heart heath study

Johannesburg, Mar 25 : Stem cells could repair damage in people with advanced heart disease, a new study has claimed.

According to researchers at a major US cardiology conference, patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slightly improved heart function.

The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts.

The patients all had chronic heart disease, along with either heart failure or angina, and their left ventricles were pumping at less than 45 percent of capacity.

All the participants in the study were ineligible for revascularisation surgery, such as coronary bypass to restore blood flow, because their heart disease was so advanced.

Those who received the stem cell therapy saw a small but significant boost in the heart's ability to pump blood, measuring the increase from the heart's main pumping chamber at 2.7 percent more than placebo patients.

Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction.

"This is the kind of information we need in order to move forward with the clinical use of stem cell therapy," News24 quoted Emerson Perin, the lead investigator from Texas Heart Institute as saying.

Perin's research, which was conducted between 2009 and 2011 across five US sites, was presented at the annual American College of Cardiology Conference in Chicago.

Read more from the original source:
Stem cell therapy `may repair heart damage`

Published on Mar 25, 2012

CHICAGO (AFP) - Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slight improvements in blood pumping but no change in most of their symptoms, United States researchers said on Saturday.

Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction.

Previous studies have established that the approach is safe in human patients, but none had examined how well it worked on a variety of heart ailments.

The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts.

Excerpt from:
Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study

Public release date: 24-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kristin Wincek kwincek@mhif.org 612-863-0249 Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation

CHICAGO Cell therapy may present an option for patients with ischemic heart disease to use their own bone marrow cells to repair the damaged areas of their hearts, and may pave the way for future treatment options, according to the FOCUS trial, which will be presented as a late-breaking clinical trial March 24 at the 61st annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session.

This is the largest study to date to look at stem cell therapy, using a patient's own stem cells, to repair damaged areas of the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction. Researchers found that left ventricular ejection fraction (the percentage of blood leaving the heart's main pumping chamber) increased by a small but significant amount (2.7 percent) in patients who received stem cell therapy. The study also revealed that the improvement in ejection fraction correlated with the number of progenitor cells (CD34+ and CD133+) in the bone marrow; and this information will help in evaluating and designing future therapies and trials.

"FOCUS is an incredibly important trial, as it has informed the cell therapy community how to better treat this high-risk patient population, and allows us to enter into an exciting, next generation of stem cell therapy armed with more data," said study investigator Timothy D. Henry, MD, an interventional cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute (MHI) at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis and director of research with the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

This multicenter study was conducted by the Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network (CCTRN), which is supported through a research grant from the National Institutes of Health's National, Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), with the goal to evaluate novel stem cell-based treatment strategies for individuals with cardiovascular disease.

FOCUS will be presented at ACC.12 by its lead investigator Emerson C. Perin, MD, PhD, director of clinical research for cardiovascular medicine at the Texas Heart Institute, one of the five sites in the CCTRN. The Minneapolis Heart Institute is another site of the five in the network, and a large number of CCTRN patients were enrolled in Minnesota.

For this study, which took place between April 2009 and April 2011, the five sites randomly selected 92 patients to receive stem cell treatment or placebo. The symptomatic patients, with an average age 63, all had chronic ischemic heart disease and an ejection fraction of less than 45 percent (baseline 34 percent) along with heart failure and/or angina and were no longer candidates for revascularization. "These patients had no other options, as medical management failed to improve their symptoms," explained the study's co-investigator Jay Traverse, MD, an interventionalist cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and physician researcher with the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

Bone marrow was aspirated from the patients and processed to obtain just the mononuclear fraction of the marrow. In patients randomly selected to receive stem cell therapy, physicians inserted a catheter into the heart's left ventricle to inject 100 million stem cells in more than 15 sites that showed damage on the electromechanical mapping image of the heart.

"Studies such as these are able to be completed much faster because of the team approach of the network" said Sonia I. Skarlatos, PhD, NHBLI's deputy director of the division of cardiovascular sciences and program director of CCTRN.

Originally posted here:
Cell therapy using patient's own bone marrow may present option for heart disease

SATURDAY, March 24 (HealthDay News) -- An innovative approach using patients' own bone marrow cells to treat chronic heart failure came up short in terms of effectiveness, researchers report.

Use of stem cell therapy to repair the slow, steady damage done to heart muscle and improve heart function is safe, but has not been shown to improve most measures of heart function, the study authors said.

"For the measures we paid most attention to, we saw no effect, there is no question about that," said researcher Dr. Lemuel Moye, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

"Ultimately, this is going to pay off handsomely for individuals and for public health in general, but it's going to take years of work," Moye said. "We are the vanguard looking for new promising lines of research."

While the hoped-for results didn't materialize, there appeared to be a small improvement in some patients, he said. "When we looked at another commonly used measure of heart function called ejection fraction, or the strength of the heart's pumping, that's where all the action was," Moye noted.

It's hard to know which measures of heart function to look at, Moye explained. "We have had some difficulty with that," he said.

Future research will look at other measures of heart function, pay more attention to the characteristics of the cells that are injected and determine which cells are best, he added.

Cardiac cells and other types of specially prepared cells are available now that were not accessible when this study started in 2009, Moye pointed out.

The results of the trial, which was sponsored by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, were to be presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago. The report was also published online March 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, Moye and colleagues worked with 92 patients, average age 63 and mostly male, who had heart failure with and without chest pain. They were randomly assigned to receive either an injection of 100 million bone marrow cells from their own bone marrow, or an inactive placebo. Patients in both groups also received aggressive medical therapy.

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Stem-Cell Trial Failed to Treat Heart Failure

CHICAGO - Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slightly improved heart function, researchers said at a major U.S. cardiology conference on Saturday.

The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts.

The patients all had chronic heart disease, along with either heart failure or angina, and their left ventricles were pumping at less than 45 per cent of capacity.

All the participants in the study were ineligible for revascularization surgery, such as coronary bypass to restore blood flow, because their heart disease was so advanced.

Those who received the stem cell therapy saw a small but significant boost in the heart's ability to pump blood, measuring the increase from the heart's main pumping chamber at 2.7 per cent more than placebo patients.

Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction.

"This is the kind of information we need in order to move forward with the clinical use of stem cell therapy," said lead investigator Emerson Perin, director of clinical research for cardiovascular medicine at the Texas Heart Institute.

Perin's research, which was conducted between 2009 and 2011 across five U.S sites, was presented at the annual American College of Cardiology Conference in Chicago.

The technique involved taking bone marrow samples from the patients and processing the marrow to extract stem cells. Doctors then injected the cells via catheter into the heart's left ventricle.

The injections, comprising some 100 million stem cells in all, were specifically targeted at damaged areas, identified by real-time electromechanical mapping of the heart.

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Stem cell treatment could repair heart damage

POWAY, CA--(Marketwire -03/22/12)- Vet-Stem announced today the introduction of StemInsure. The StemInsure service provides banked stem cells that can be grown to supply a lifetime of stem cell therapy for dogs. One fat collection, in conjunction with another anesthetized procedure, gives access to a lifetime of stem cells.

Vet-Stem has trained over 3,500 veterinarians, provided stem cells for over 8,000 animals in the US and Canada and currently banks more than 25,000 doses for future therapeutic use. Many veterinarians and their clients have requested a method to collect and store stem cells when a dog is young, before it needs the regenerative cells for therapy. StemInsure was designed to meet this need.

A Vet-Stem credentialed veterinarian can collect as little as 5 grams of fat (about the size of a grape) from a dog or puppy during an anesthetized procedure. Many veterinarians and owners are electing to do this fat collection in conjunction with a spay or neuter. This small amount of fat is processed and stem cells are cryopreserved in Vet-Stem's state-of-the-art facility. The cells can be cultured in the future to provide enough stem cells to last for the lifetime of the dog. More information can be found at http://www.vet-stem.com/steminsure.php.

"Vet-Stem is pleased to provide StemInsure as a solution to the thousands of veterinarians and dog owners who recognize the value of Vet-Stem cell therapy. The ability to store the cells in conjunction with another procedure is a great way to ensure that the dog will have access to a lifetime of cell therapy while reducing the number of anesthetic events," said Dr. Bob Harman, DVM, MPVM, and CEO of Vet-Stem. Dr. Harman continued, "Currently, Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Therapy is widely used to treat osteoarthritis, and tendon/ligament injuries. It is our expectation that the therapeutic use of adipose derived stem cells will continue to expand and add to the value of a lifetime supply of stem cells for dogs."

About Vet-Stem:In January of 2004, Vet-Stem introduced the first veterinary stem cell service in the United States. Since that time there has been rapid adoption of this technology for treatment of tendon, ligament, and joint injuries by the veterinary community. Studies have shown that mesenchymal stem cells can dramatically improve the healing of injuries and diseases that have had very few treatment options in the past.

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Vet-Stem Announces StemInsure(R): A Small Fat Sample Now, a Lifetime of Stem Cells Later

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ)One of the last search and rescue dogs from 9/11 lives here in Maryland. She was suffering from a painful condition until her owner took action with breakthrough technology.

Mary Bubala has the story.

Red is a search and rescue dog from Annapolis, but has traveled across the country. Her missions include Hurricane Katrina, the La Plata tornadoes and the Pentagon after 9/11.

They credit them with finding 70 percent of the human remains so that helped a whole lot of those families actually get closure, said Heather Roche, Reds owner.

Sept. 11 was Reds first search. Today shes one of the last 9/11 search and rescue dogs still alive.

She retired last summer due to severe arthritis.

It would be nice if her arthritis, if she felt better, that she could do those kinds of things that she misses, Reds owner said while fighting back tears. Alright I am going to cry.

Roche did some research and found an animal hospital in northern Virginia that uses breakthrough stem cell therapy to treat arthritis in dogs.

The Burke Animal Clinic is one of just a few across the country that use stem cell therapy.

The vet harvests 1 to 2 ounces of the dogs fatty tissue, activates the stem cells and then injects them back into the troubled areas.

Read this article:
Stem Cell Therapy Used To Treat 9/11 Search And Rescue Dog

2nd Lee Co. doctor's license restricted in stem cell case

FORT MYERS, Fla.- Another Lee County doctor is caught in the center of a stem cell controversy. The State Department of Health has issued an emergency license restriction to Dr. Konstantine Yankopolus, a general practitioner.

Dr. Yankopolus is still allowed to practice general medicine and is treating patients. The license restriction mandates he can't do anything involving stem cell treatment.

It's business as usual at his office on Colonial Blvd.

The doctor is still treating patients, but an emergency order issued from the Florida Department of Health, Monday prevents him from doing anything with stem cells.

The order says Dr. Yankopolus' license "is hereby immediately restricted from providing, collaborating, facilitating, procuring, referring or advising on any stem cell treatment."

The action comes after the state suspended the license of his colleague, Dr. Zannos Grekos' earlier this month.

The emergency order says Dr. Yankopolus helped Dr. Grekos perform stem cell therapy on the late Richard Polling despite knowing the Bonita Springs cardiologist was not allowed to do such a procedure.

The state Surgeon General alleges, Dr. Yankopolus falsified Polling's records.

He writes, "Subsequent to the death of patient R.P., Dr. Yankopolus entered a false medical progress note in R.P.'s chart falsely indicating that no stem cell preparation was infused."

See the article here:
2nd Lee Co. doctor's license restricted in stem cell case

TUESDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) -- A novel technique that uses a kidney transplant recipient's own stem cells may someday replace or reduce the initial use of anti-rejection medications, new research suggests.

Six months after receiving a kidney transplant, only about 8 percent of people given their own mesenchymal stem cells experienced rejection compared with almost 22 percent of people on the standard anti-rejection drugs, according to the study.

"Mesenchymal stem cells are stem cells that can be differentiated into a variety of cells," explained Dr. Camillo Ricordi, study senior author and director of the Cell Transplant Center and Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

"If you infuse mesenchymal stem cells at the time of the transplant, you could replace the use of powerful anti-rejection drugs, and maybe replace immunosuppressants altogether," he said. This technique could be used in the transplantation of islet cells (in the pancreas) for people with type 1 diabetes, and for other organ transplants, such as the liver, he added.

The people given their own stem cells also had improved kidney function earlier after transplant, Ricordi said.

Results of the study appear in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

One of the biggest remaining hurdles in organ transplantation remains the need for powerful anti-rejection and immune-suppressing medications after the transplant.

"Basically, the way we prevent kidney rejections is by putting you on very powerful anti-rejection drugs and immunosuppressive agents to prevent your cells from attacking the foreign organ," said Dr. Robert Provenzano, chair of the department of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation at St. John Providence Health System in Detroit. "But, the current standard has some problems, like an increased risk of infections and the possibility of creating a cancer."

The body's immune system sends out surveillance cells to protect the body against foreign invaders, such as a bacteria, virus or, in this case, a new organ, Provenzano said. The current method of preventing these cells from attacking the new organ is essentially to destroy the surveillance cells. But mesenchymal cells can naturally suppress those surveillance cells so they don't attack, he said.

To see if this suppression would be enough to prevent rejection, Ricordi and his colleagues, including researchers from Xiamen University in China, recruited 159 people with serious kidney disease who were on dialysis. They ranged in age from 18 to 61.

See the original post:
Stem Cell Therapy Could Boost Kidney Transplant Success: Study

A special dog used to help people is getting some much-needed help of her own at a Virginia clinic, myFOXdc.com reported.

Red, a 12-year-old black Labrador, is one of the last surviving search and rescue dogs deployed during the 9/11 attacks.

Her handler, Heather Roche, told WTTG-TV that Red was recently certified when Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, and the devastating terror attacks were her first big mission.

Red's job was to find DNA evidence at The Pentagon's north parking lot with 26 other dogs, and according to Roche, she did a "fantastic job."

"I got her as a puppy ... You have to convince [her] everything that she does, whether it's climbing ladders or any kind of search, that it's her idea," Roche told WTTG-TV. "No matter what I've asked her to do, she's done it and she's done it flawlessly."

But in her old age Red developed crippling arthritis, and underwent stem cell regenerative therapy Monday to help ease her pain so she can get back out on the job.

Dr. John Herrity of Burke Animal Clinic in Burke, Va., told WTTG-TV, "Red has a back issue that, after a fall from a ladder has not really been right, and has been living in pain, so we're going to give those stem cells IV [intravenously] and then also inject them along the back to try to help Red's comfort."

"She's had a great career and has made a difference to a lot of families by bringing their loved ones home," Roche said.

Click here to read more.

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9/11 search and rescue dog receives stem cell therapy

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SanBio Inc. today announced the successful enrollment of the first dose cohort of patients in its Phase 1/2a clinical trial testing the safety and efficacy of a novel allogeneic stem cell therapy product, SB623, in patients suffering from chronic deficits resulting from previous stroke injuries. The first 6 patients, of a total of 18, have been successfully administered SB623. The trial is being conducted at Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh. No safety concerns have been reported. For details regarding this clinical trial, please refer to http://www.strokeclinicaltrial.org.

SB623 is derived from adult bone marrow and has shown safety and efficacy in rodent models of chronic stroke. "This represents a major milestone in the human clinical testing of this important new approach for regenerative medicine", said Keita Mori, SanBio CEO. "We are pleased to learn that the initial dose level was well tolerated."

SB623 is being delivered to the damaged region of the brains of patients who have suffered an ischemic stroke. Product safety is the primary focus of the study but various measurements of efficacy are also being tested.

"The successful completion of the initial dose cohort is a major step in any first-in-human study", said Dr. Ernest Yankee, SanBio's Vice President of Development. "We are looking forward to initiating the next two dose cohorts and wrapping up the study. The safety findings thus far are very encouraging"

About SB623: SB623 is a proprietary cell therapy product consisting of cells derived from genetically engineered bone marrow stromal cells obtained from healthy adult donors. SB623 is administered adjacent to the area damaged by stroke and functions by producing proteins that aid the regenerative process.

About SanBio: SanBio is a privately held San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of new regenerative cell therapy products.

For more information: http://www.san-bio.com

See more here:
SanBio Announces Enrollment of First Cohort of Patients in Its Clinical Trial of Stem Cell Therapy for Chronic Stroke

09-02-2012 23:02 Stem Cell Therapy latest news - Jan 2012, MS options Contact Kevin for help to raise funds for treatment part 2 of 4

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Stem Cells Therapy MS2.mp4 - Video

14-03-2012 16:22 Stem Cells for Cosmetic use using Bioplasty featuring Artefill. Envision using your own stem cells to restore or reshape your body to a more attractive and youthful figure in a way that is safe, natural and undetectable. Today, stem cell therapy is no longer a science fiction story but a reality...

Continued here:
Bioplasty - Stem Cell Treatments

Dr. Konstantine K. Yankopolus

The state Department of Health restricted a second doctor's license for working under the direction of Dr. Zannos Grekos in performing a stem cell treatment and for falsifying a medical report after a patient died, according to the state order.

The emergency license restriction is against Dr. Konstantine K. Yankopolus, 3880 Colonial Blvd., Suite 2, Fort Myers, according to the order issued by the state health department late Monday.

The restriction only prohibits Yankopolus from doing anything with stem cells. After a career as an obstetrician/gynecologist, he is now in general practice.

"We attempted a life-saving procedure on a very sick patient and it didn't go well," Yankopolus said Monday night. "Our motivation was pure the patient had no other option."

The state's action comes on the heels of Grekos attorney last week issuing a statement that another doctor, and not his client, was involved in the treatment of a 77-year-old Indiana man who died March 2. Grekos attorney also denied that a stem cell treatment was performed, only liposuction.

The state health department suspended Grekos license after the death, saying Grekos violated an earlier restriction that he not to do anything with stem cells or bone marrow aspirate in his practice at 9500 Bonita Beach Road, Suite 310.

Lee County sheriff's authorities identified the man as Richard Poling, of Newburgh, Ind. The Sheriff's Office also is conducting a criminal probe.

Grekos has been under state scrutiny by state health regulators for well over a year when an earlier patient, a 66-year-old breast cancer patient, went to him for stem cell treatment in 2010 for neurological problems. She later fell, suffered severe brain damage and was taken off life support. After her death, the state ordered Grekos not to do anything with stem cells or bone marrow aspirate in his practice.

The restriction did not prohibit him from conducting educational seminars in the community about stem cell therapy or from arranging for patients to go for the treatment in the Dominican Republic.

Excerpt from:
State: Second doctor's license restricted for performing stem cell treatment on patient who died

Editor's Choice Academic Journal Main Category: Huntingtons Disease Also Included In: Stem Cell Research Article Date: 19 Mar 2012 - 10:00 PDT

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However, according to a study published March 15 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, a special type of brain cell created from stem cells could help restore the muscle coordination deficits that are responsible for uncontrollable spasms, a characteristic of the disease. The researchers demonstrated that movement in mice with a Huntington's-like condition could be restored.

Su-Chun Zhang, a University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist and the senior author of the study, said:

In the study Zhang, who is an expert in creating various types of brain cells from human embryonic or induce pluripotent stem cells, and his team focused on GABA neurons. The degradation of GABA cells causes the breakdown of a vital neural circuit and loss of motor function in individuals suffering from Huntington's disease.

According to Zhang, GABA neurons generate a vital neurotransmitter, a chemical that helps support the communication network in the brain that coordinates movement.

Zhang and his team at the UW-Madison Waisman Center, discovered how to generate large quantities of GABA neurons from human embryonic stem cells. The team's goal was to determine whether these cells would safely integrate into the brain of a mouse model of Huntington's disease.

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Huntington's Disease - Stem Cell Therapy Potential

Stem Cell Therapy Helping Heroic Dogs Recover

News4's Darcy Spencer explains how a breakthrough treatment is helping search and rescue dogs like Red recover after years of working in disaster zones.

A breakthrough treatment is helping area search-and-rescue dogs that played key roles on Sept. 11, 2001, and during other disasters.

Red's first assignment as a search, rescue and recovery dog was at the Pentagon following the 9/11 attacks. Years of rescue work and a 12-foot fall from a ladder have taken a toll. Arthritis forced Red into retirement in July and turned her into a couch potato.

The 12-year-old black lab received a breakthrough stem cell treatment today that will ease her pain and give her more mobility.

Her veterinarian, Dr. John Herrity, of the Burke Animal Clinic, has done more than two dozen of the stem cell operations developed by Medivet America, which also donated the cost of the procedure.

The treatment won't bring Red back out of retirement, but it is expected to put spring back in her step within a couple of months.

Two other 9/11 search-and-rescued dogs have been treated with stem cell therapy and are back to their normal activities.

See the article here:
Hero Dog Receives Stem Cell Therapy

(MENAFN - Arab Times) Ministry of Health (MoH) employees holding PhD degrees announced that they will participate in the sit-in demonstration carried out by the Labor Union of Health Ministry, reports Al-Seyassah daily.

In the press release, they said they are protesting against the fact that they are receiving the same salary scale and benefits as any other ministry employee with lower qualifications and if necessary, they are ready to even burn their PhD certificates at the sit-in to get the benefits they deserve according to their qualifications.

The sit-in will be carried out in front of Health Ministry headquarters in Sulaibikhat at 10 am on Tuesday, March 20, 2012.

The number of PhD holders has exceeded 100 considering the participation of PhD holders from other ministries as well.

Meanwhile, the MoH has banned stem cell therapy in the country until the committee tasked to set the standards for the treatment completes its work, reports Al-Anba daily quoting Director of Health License Department Dr Marzouq Al-Bader.

Al-Bader disclosed the ministry had earlier formed the committee to ensure the stem cell procedures are carried out in an appropriate manner to protect the patients. He added the ministry will also issue a decision soon to regulate the use of antibiotics in the private health sector.

Meanwhile, Al-Bader confirmed the ministry has endorsed around 51,000 female doctors in private hospitals and health centers. He said the ministry closely monitors the performance of female doctors and those found to have violated the law will be referred to the Medical Council for the necessary action.

On the issuance of licenses through the Internet, Al-Bader revealed his department has asked the ministry to activate the e-link system for this purpose.

He said the ministry has asked the Kuwait Municipality to issue permit for the construction of a building fit for the department's operations.

Meanwhile, the Medical Emergency Department at the Ministry of Health has affirmed its readiness to deal with emergency cases that may arise due to a series of dust storms engulfing the country.

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Stem cell therapy banned in Kuwait